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Hive multi-cart - It's alive!


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  • 3 months later...
  • 3 months later...

Is this HIVE multicart still sold or is the "LTO Flash" the only and or best one anyway? Its just a really expensive flash cart.

The HIVE multicart still doesn't start to sell. And the LTO-Flash is inexpensive given its capabilities and the complexity of Intellivision hardware. Don't talk so fast ;)

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LTO-Flash is a great purchase... consider how expensive an alternative is on eBay. I'm still hoping for the Hive also but expect the price would be similar (my guess only).

This reminded me I bought a scarce Cuttle Cart 3 just a few months before the LTO-Flash came out and I paid $300 dollars for the privilege of testing my games in real hardware.

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Is this HIVE multicart still sold or is the "LTO Flash" the only and or best one anyway? Its just a really expensive flash cart.

Hive was in development, but never made it to market. The last two multicarts for Intellivision were the LTO Flash and CC3. The CC3 was $150 until it sold out where it jumped to $250-500 if you could find one. The LTO Flash was a welcome rain to the INTV multicart drought. Hive was promising and affordable, but the developer didn't have the best track record with follow through. Rocketeer and Mars Minis were cancelled with ongoing refunds. Hive went indefinitely radio silent.

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I dont recall Rocketeer and Mars Minis being cancelled.

My bad, just the ongoing refunds. His exact post from a year ago, for those interested:

 

Man, you gotta laugh at the bullshit posted by the trolling fucktards in my threads. Now down to the business at hand.

 

Firstly, I'd like to publicly apologise to those people who asked me for pre-order refunds and didn't get a timely response. Work and life have kept me away from AA for far too long. As a priority those people have all been sent PMs today and will be dealt with ASAP.

 

Secondly, to paraphrase Whose Line Is It Anyway: "Free refunds for all! I'll be contacting everybody else who pre-ordered Rocketeer or Mars Minis and giving them a full refund too. Please wait until you are contacted by me in PM, so I can keep track. Why am I doing this?, I hear you ask. Looking at my upcoming schedule (and other factors), I don't currently have the time to run a comprehensive test programme, fix any lurking and hard to find bugs or build/test/ship the remaining carts. So it seems like a good time to draw a line under this long running saga. Plus the last year has hammered home that it doesnt matter how optimistic you are about getting things done, life always finds a way to kick you in the nuts.

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LTO Flash is the only way to go. It’s more than just a flash cart, it adds expanded capabilities to games because it includes JLP tech, not to mention high compatibility that the CC3 doesn’t have. It is a must-get. Except for Boulderdash and a few other games, all of my carts are in the basement now and I keep the LTO Flash in all the time.

 

 

Is this HIVE multicart still sold or is the "LTO Flash" the only and or best one anyway? Its just a really expensive flash cart.

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LTO Flash is the only way to go. It’s more than just a flash cart, it adds expanded capabilities to games because it includes JLP tech, not to mention high compatibility that the CC3 doesn’t have. It is a must-get. Except for Boulderdash and a few other games, all of my carts are in the basement now and I keep the LTO Flash in all the time.

 

 

 

I'll end up getting one if available. This is for a future dev proj, not so much for playing old games. Tnx for the info.

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If you are developing stuff, than my humble opinion is that you really need one, it's easy to get your bin/cfg to it to play, and the JLP tech is there:

 

 

  1. Game save/restore
  2. Accelerated multiplication and division
  3. 8,000 16-bit variables in IntyBASIC
  4. 1mb of storage
  5. Use LTO-enabled DRM (eg, give testers ROMs that can be used on their LTO Flash only
  6. Other stuff I cannot think of right now, but if you are writing something for the Inty it's *the* way to go.

 

HTH

 

 

 

 

http://atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=501927

 

I'll end up getting one if available. This is for a future dev proj, not so much for playing old games. Tnx for the info.

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If you are developing stuff, than my humble opinion is that you really need one, it's easy to get your bin/cfg to it to play, and the JLP tech is there:

 

 

  1. Game save/restore
  2. Accelerated multiplication and division
  3. 8,000 16-bit variables in IntyBASIC
  4. 1mb of storage
  5. Use LTO-enabled DRM (eg, give testers ROMs that can be used on their LTO Flash only
  6. Other stuff I cannot think of right now, but if you are writing something for the Inty it's *the* way to go.

 

HTH

 

 

 

 

http://atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=501927

 

Is there a C compiler or is BASIC the only option?

Is IntyBASIC highly performant?

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Is there a C compiler or is BASIC the only option?

Is IntyBASIC highly performant?

 

There's a pretty good assembler with a nice pre-processor. ;)

 

As for IntyBASIC, it has pretty good performance. First of all, it's not interpreted, but compiled, so it's not as slow as older BASIC environments from the micro-computer era.

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There's a pretty good assembler with a nice pre-processor. ;)

 

As for IntyBASIC, it has pretty good performance. First of all, it's not interpreted, but compiled, so it's not as slow as older BASIC environments from the micro-computer era.

 

Is "IntyBASIC" statically typed like C? Otherwise this option seems like a horrible idea.

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Is "IntyBASIC" statically typed like C? Otherwise this option seems like a horrible idea.

 

Hmm... I don't know why it would seem "like a horrible idea." *shrug*

 

IntyBASIC has only two types of variables: 8-bit and 16-bit variables, which can be interpreted as signed or unsigned. Arrays are just contiguous blocks of either. 16-bit variables can contain fractional values, which are treated as 8.8 fixed point values. That's it.

 

IntyBASIC is very much not C, and it is not intended to be. It is BASIC. Its power lies in the straightforward and optimized translation from BASIC idioms to Assembly Language constructs (the compiler generates Assembly Language, not object code, which needs to be assembled separately). It is still BASIC, though, so do not expect a closer representation of the machine like C provides.

 

IntyBASIC does support pointers, low-lever data structures, and has concessions to access Assembly Language routines directly from the program. It also has direct support for Intellivision-specific devices, such as hardware sprites, hand-controller decoding, and music and sound processors.

 

It is a framework with a simple runtime engine to support game programming, but it is still BASIC on its surface.

 

Like I said before, there's also Assembly Language with a very good assembler that has a somewhat sophisticated pre-processor and a very good interactive command-line debugger. That's actually my platform of choice, but people seem to be rather happy with IntyBASIC.

 

-dZ.

Edited by DZ-Jay
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Hmm... I don't know why it would seem "like a horrible idea." *shrug*

 

IntyBASIC has only two types of variables: 8-bit and 16-bit variables, which can be interpreted as signed or unsigned. Arrays are just contiguous blocks of either. 16-bit variables can contain fractional values, which are treated as 8.8 fixed point values. That's it.

 

IntyBASIC is very much not C, and it is not intended to be. It is BASIC. Its power lies in the straightforward and optimized translation from BASIC idioms to Assembly Language constructs (the compiler generates Assembly Language, not object code, which needs to be assembled separately). It is still BASIC, though, so do not expect a closer representation of the machine like C provides.

 

IntyBASIC does support pointers, low-lever data structures, and has concessions to access Assembly Language routines directly from the program. It also has direct support for Intellivision-specific devices, such as hardware sprites, hand-controller decoding, and music and sound processors.

 

It is a framework with a simple runtime engine to support game programming, but it is still BASIC on its surface.

 

Like I said before, there's also Assembly Language with a very good assembler that has a somewhat sophisticated pre-processor and a very good interactive command-line debugger. That's actually my platform of choice, but people seem to be rather happy with IntyBASIC.

 

-dZ.

 

So these "low-lever data structures" are similar to a C struct? If so if I create say "struct A" and "struct B" then do "A a = A()" then "B b = a" I get a compiler error? Is this statically type-compiled situation possible?

 

Trying to see if the Object System is bloated or not. There is 0 bloat in C's statically compile time checked types.

 

Any good code examples? All I find is the compiler on GitHub with no example code.

Edited by zezba9000
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I've read that even some of the top notch publishers of aftermarket Intellivision games now publish games developed in IntyBASIC. In particular if you can profile the code and put time critical sections in hand coded assembly language, the source language shouldn't be an issue.

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So these "low-lever data structures" are similar to a C struct? If so if I create say "struct A" and "struct B" then do "A a = A()" then "B b = a" I get a compiler error? Is this statically type-compiled situation possible?

 

Trying to see if the Object System is bloated or not. There is 0 bloat in C's statically compile time checked types.

 

Any good code examples? All I find is the compiler on GitHub with no example code.

 

zezba9000 - there is an Intellivision Programming Forum that would be better for these questions and concerns instead going totally off topic of this thread.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/forum/144-intellivision-programming/

 

Thanks

 

:)

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Ok found samples. So ya looks like BASICS Object System is probably bloated? Without static typing you have to keep track of object types at runtime in memory. C is a much better lang in this area. Wish something like cc65 existed for it. Does the SDCC support the "CP1610" CPU?

 

Does the gcc support cross-compiling to the "CP1610" CPU?

 

zezba9000 - there is an Intellivision Programming Forum that would be better for these questions and concerns instead going totally off topic of this thread.

http://atariage.com/...on-programming/

Thanks

 

 

K sry.

Edited by zezba9000
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So these "low-lever data structures" are similar to a C struct? If so if I create say "struct A" and "struct B" then do "A a = A()" then "B b = a" I get a compiler error? Is this statically type-compiled situation possible?

 

Trying to see if the Object System is bloated or not. There is 0 bloat in C's statically compile time checked types.

 

Any good code examples? All I find is the compiler on GitHub with no example code.

 

In IntyBASIC there is no "struct". You can define static data tables in ROM or arrays in RAM, and both are basically the same: they are contiguous blocks of memory, either in ROM or RAM, so there is no "bloat" at all.

 

What specifically are you trying to accomplish? Can you post some sample C code of what you are looking for? We can then tell you if it is possible to do the same in IntyBASIC and gauge its relative operational cost.

 

-dZ.

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In IntyBASIC there is no "struct". You can define static data tables in ROM or arrays in RAM, and both are basically the same: they are contiguous blocks of memory, either in ROM or RAM, so there is no "bloat" at all.

 

What specifically are you trying to accomplish? Can you post some sample C code of what you are looking for? We can then tell you if it is possible to do the same in IntyBASIC and gauge its relative operational cost.

 

-dZ.

 

Aww ic. I'm experimenting with a .NET IL translator. Its designed to target stuff like c89 (for the CC65 compiler etc) but it could possible also target IntyBASIC.

 

So in terms of performance, does IntyBASIC understand how to optimize a 16bit int arithmetic vs a 16bit FixedPoint? Or is there extra runtime logic that has to do type checking? Or are all 16bit types processed as FixedPoints? Or does IntyBASIC use some other method to statically determine how it should be processed at compile time?

Edited by zezba9000
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Is the 3.3V/5V issued discussed here much of an issue for the LTO Flash?

 

I've never heard of that issue, but considering that intvnut (the designer of the LTO Flash!) is a dyed-in-the-wool hardware engineer with a long history of embedded systems design for some major semiconductor manufacturers, I wouldn't imagine there to be any such issues in his device.

 

That said, I'm sure he'll chime in soon to provide some details. :)

 

-dZ.

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